About

ABOUT OUR TEAM

OUR diligent robotics TEAM

At Diligent Robotics, our mission is to enhance people’s lives with robotics technology. We unite AI and robotics to design socially intelligent robots that assist people every day, as trusted and reliable members of a team. We aim to empower people to spend less time on logistical tasks so that they are able to use their ingenuity, passion and skills on bigger challenges.

Our team is developing a suite of AI to enable robots to collaborate and work with people in everyday environments. At the core, we are focused on user-centered design to build solutions based on the needs of the people we aim to support.

Moxi is our healthcare service robot that autonomously completes tasks in hospital environments. We believe Moxi has the potential to positively change the way healthcare teams function by alleviating the time they spend on non-patient related activities, enabling them to remain focused on what matters most, taking care of people. Learn more about Moxi here.

our LEADERSHIP TEAM

ANDREA THOMAZ, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER

Andrea Thomaz is a renowned social robotics expert and currently the CEO of Diligent Robotics. Her accolades include being recognized by the National Academy of Science as aKavli Fellow, the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Tech, Popular Science’s Brilliant 10 list with her robot Curi appearing on thecover and MIT Technology Review’sNext Gen of 35 Innovators U 35. Andrea’s passion for social robotics began during her work at MIT Media Lab where she realized the opportunity to utilize AI to develop machines that address existing human needs, rather than developing machines before understanding how humans could benefit from them. She co-founded Diligent Robotics to bring her vision of machines helping humans mainstream with socially intelligent robots that collaborate with humans by doing their routine tasks so they have more time for human experiences. Andrea earned her PhD from MIT, BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UT Austin and was a Robotics Professor at Georgia Tech and UT Austin.

Vivian Chu, CTO and Co-Founder

Vivian Chu is considered a leading innovator in robotics, applying AI and social intelligence in the development of robots, with honors as an Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholar, Stanford University’s EECS Rising Stars, and Robohub’s “25 women in robotics you need to know about” in 2016. During her university studies, Vivian explored various engineering disciplines and discovered her perfect fit with robotics when she had the opportunity to program a Roomba to climb up a ramp while at UC Berkeley. She loved seeing the physical manifestation of code and how robots can move in the real world. After completing her Ph.D. at Georgia Tech, she help found Diligent Robotics to develop socially intelligent robots to work autonomously yet collaboratively in a team. Vivian has over 10 years of experience with AI, machine learning, and natural language processing and is an expert in applying machine learning algorithms with multimodal data to concrete tasks across various robotic platforms such as the PR2, Meka Robot, and Kinova Jaco2. She has worked at several industry labs including IBM, Google X, and Honda Research Institute.

AGATA ROZGA, HEAD OF PRODUCT

Agata Rozga is a psychologist and the chief researcher responsible for overseeing observational studies to determine how new technologies can assist in healthcare environments. Having previously worked with the founders at Georgia Tech, she accepted the opportunity to continue the research on how robots could support members of clinical care teams. During this process, her appreciation deepened for the challenges the frontline healthcare staff face every day and the opportunities to address their needs by introducing robots which can do many of the tasks that divert them from patient care. She earned her Ph.D. from UCLA and has spent over 15 years leading observational studies of social behavior. At Georgia Tech, she joined computer scientists and engineers to explore how technology could be used to develop new tools to measure these behaviors. She was also a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Georgia State University.